


the secrets we planted are no longer rotting

by feralphoenix



Series: a heart is no king's throne [7]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Frisk, Benevolent Player, Borderline Personality Disorder, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - C-PTSD, Nonverbal Frisk, Other, Panic Attacks, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Body, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route, Suicidal Thoughts, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15518505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Frisk and the player flip the table.





	the secrets we planted are no longer rotting

**Author's Note:**

> (reality is finally better than your dreams – _Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.)_
> 
>  
> 
> as usual, chara's name sign is respectfully pilfered from mangaluva's [give me a sign](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5448176). check that shit out if you haven't yet read it.
> 
> title is a line from [this poem](https://marchenwings.tumblr.com/post/172416451864/).
> 
> also, a preemptive warning: any grave convos wank in the comments will be zapped on sight. i am old and tired and have seen this argument a million times since 2015; this is not a black and white situation.

Asriel finally turns away from the flower patch to fully face you instead of just peeking over his shoulder at you—maybe he’s accepted that you’re not going away. The light filtering down from the cave reflects off the golden flowers and silhouettes his soft round edges in bright warm yellows and pale oranges, the colors of tigers and tiger’s eye, a little painful for you to look at. His brown eyes flick back and forth as he watches you, frowning a little, as if trying to puzzle you out; his mouth is flatter than the apologetic smile he’s worn most of this time as he takes in every detail of you, from the rips in your tights that didn’t close over after your fight to the red or sticky patches on your face where you wiped your eyes imperfectly of Chara’s tears.

Their agony slides into you like bitter honey, slow and even, endless. With Asriel right in front of their eyes they’re forgetting to try to hold themself back from you, and you could drown, _are_ drowning, in their love and regret. Waves would give you moments of relief, but the constancy makes it so hard to push back enough to examine your own feelings.

And you _want_ to examine them, because—because you don’t know how you feel about Asriel yet. Flowey, and Flowey’s monstrous form that he used the first time he tried to kill you, and the adult Boss Monster who took all the monsters you love hostage to try to force Chara to play with him forever, and the sad chubby kid whose nose ran when he cried in your arms and who just said _that’s fair_ when you told him you wouldn’t forgive him—they’re all the same person. This boy who’s choosing to spend his last moments in this form here away from his parents out of guilt and shame has all of those things inside him, he’s both the person who hurt you terribly in so many ways and the one who saved everyone, the one you feel sorry for, and you’re struggling to fit the pieces together so that they’ll make sense.

“Hey,” Asriel says. (A fresh outpouring of anguish from Chara, here, just at the sound of his voice—a voice you’ve heard over and over in snatches of memory, where their grief was so great it blotted him out every time. You brace your knees so they won’t buckle.) “Let me ask you a question.”

You wipe your face—you have no idea whether the bright light’s stinging them, or if this is Chara weeping again—and nod.

“Frisk…” Asriel narrows his eyes at you, then squeezes his hands into fists. “Why did you come here? Everyone knows the legend, right…? ‘Travelers who climb Mt. Ebott are said to disappear.’” He hesitates just a moment, just long enough for the cold jolt around your middle to really sink in, and then goes on. “Frisk. Why would you ever climb a mountain like that? Was it foolishness? Was it fate? Or was it… because you…?”

He trails off here, looking sort of sidelong at you still, sure enough of himself to imply it but still hesitating to actually speak the words. He unfolds one hand and picks at the hem of his green-and-yellow sweater with little white claws.

You press your lips together firmly and ball your own hands into fists at your sides. Chara laughs weakly, wetly, in the back of your head.

At last Asriel smiles, you guess accepting that you have no intention to reopen your old wounds for him. “Well. Only you know the answer, don’t you…?”

He shifts and turns away from you, facing the flowers again, but he continues. “I know why Chara climbed the mountain,” he says, and there’s a second little jolt in your stomach that you’re pretty sure didn’t come from you. “It wasn’t for a very happy reason.” He sighs. “Frisk. I’ll be honest with you. Chara hated humanity. Why they did, they never talked about it. But they felt very strongly about that.”

His tone when he speaks about them is—hushed, small, somber; he has some undertone that’s too hard for you to fully decipher. He doesn’t say anything else.

You think at least a minute passes before he pricks up one floppy ear—it lifts and rotates a little just like a dog’s—and then turns, a little wide-eyed in surprise to see that you’re still here.

“Frisk…” Asriel smiles, eyebrows drawn into a pained pinch in the middle of his forehead. “You really _are_ different from Chara. In fact, though you have similar… uh, fashion choices,” he says, gesturing at your striped shirt ( _like he’s one to talk,_ Chara says in the back of your mind, wobbly with tears), “I don’t know why I ever acted like you were the same person.”

He hesitates just a moment again, the corners of his mouth scrunching; he breaks eye contact with you and looks at the flowers at his feet. “Maybe… the truth is… Chara wasn’t really the greatest person.”

It feels just exactly like getting hit in the stomach with something huge and solid. You can’t breathe. You _know_ this should hurt but the pain hasn’t set in yet; you’re just left with knees shaking, your whole body vibrating a little from the impact, completely numb. Your ears are even ringing. It feels like the first time your soul was pulled out of your body to fight a monster, just a little, that sensation of still standing there but also being drawn far away from yourself.

Asriel isn’t done. He beams at you, forehead still creased. “While, Frisk… you’re the type of friend I wish I always had.”

Oh. There’s that pain. It starts tight, a fist around your heart straining to crush it, and radiates throughout your ribcage, all throbbing stinging cramps. You grab at your chest, clench your fist hard on the front of your shirt. These feelings _aren’t yours,_ but no matter how you try to remind yourself of that it doesn’t stop your vision from graying around the edges. Your back bends on itself a little. You unclench your fist and rub the same spot, pressing down with the heel of your hand, trying to ease the sensation, but it doesn’t go away.

_He hates me. He hates me, he hates me, he doesn’t want me—who could blame him? Who do I think I am, to complain, what right have I got? I killed him, I dragged him into this, this is all my fault, I really am the worst person, I wish I’d never called for help when I fell, I wish I’d just broken my fucking neck and DIED—why am I still here, what’s the point in existing if Asriel hates me—even the ‘hell’ they used to threaten me with would have been kinder—_

It’s all you can do to stay standing. Chara’s mind is a wildfire, a cyclone, seas raging under a hurricane. The only reason you _don’t_ drop to your knees and wail like a baby is because you’ve felt this before—and not from Chara’s mind leaking into yours. A surge of emotion that’s Chara’s current feelings’ long-lost twin was what got you up the mountain in the first place, half-starved and weak though you were at the time.

(Funny. That was only a few days ago, but it feels so long ago it could well be years.)

“So maybe I was projecting a little bit,” Asriel finishes, and then he laughs a little, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “Let’s be honest. I did some weird stuff as a flower.

“There’s one last thing I feel like I should tell you,” he goes on, sobering a little. “Frisk, when Chara and I combined our souls together… the control over our body was actually split between us.” This makes you raise your head—no _wonder_ Chara’s been a little better than you at navigating the mess of sharing mind and body both, if their experience with Asriel was anything like your situation now. “They were the one that picked up their own empty body. And then, when we got to the village… they were the one that wanted to…” he falters here, before settling on “to use our full power. I was the one that resisted. And then, because of me, we…” He drops his head and turns away, smiling bitter and helpless, before shrugging. “Well, that’s why I ended up a flower.” He wrinkles up his muzzle and squeezes his eyes shut like he’s trying not to cry himself; his smile fades. “Frisk… this whole time, I’ve blamed myself for that decision. That’s why I adopted that horrible view of the world. ‘Kill or be killed.’ But now…”

He raises his head and wipes his eyes messily, then tries to put on a brave face: it doesn’t work, his smile still too wobbly to be convincing. “After meeting you… Frisk, I don’t regret that decision anymore. I did the right thing.”

For one horrible paralyzing moment, you think you’re going to be sick—your stomach clenches and rolls, and you clap a hand to your mouth and swallow hard. Nothing comes up, but your eyes burn and wetness brims against your eyelashes. Inside your skull there’s a roaring silence that rings in your ears until it’s painful. It’s like a scream. Maybe it is one.

“If I killed those humans… we would’ve had to wage war with all humanity,” Asriel goes on. His eyebrows tremble a little, but he pushes onward—is it pride? Is he trying to convince himself of what he’s saying? “And in the end, everyone went free, right? I still feel sad knowing how long it took…” He trails off for a while, looking down at the ground again. “So maybe it wasn’t a perfect decision.” He shrugs again, very awkwardly. “But you can’t regret hard choices your whole life, right?” And here he smiles. “Well, not that I have much of a life left. But that’s besides the point.”

You breathe in raggedly. Your face is soaked with tears: There’s no way to tell how much of them are Chara’s and which are yours.

Asriel’s head whips up at the sound, and his face seizes with distress; he closes the distance between you, leaning in to peer at you. “Oh, gosh, Frisk, please don’t cry…” He raises his hands and hesitates a little before finally settling them against your cheeks. His pads are squishy and warm and still very solid; something in Chara quells automatically at the sensation on your skin. You both moan, a long low wavering sobbing sound that hurts your throat. Asriel smiles and wipes at your face with his thumbs, though new tears keep falling to track your cheeks with salty wet to replace the ones he’s dried.

“Thank you,” he says, and his voice cracks. He’s still trying to force that brave smile, but his mouth is shaking, and his eyes are glittery wet with threatening tears of his own. He leans in to bump his fluffy forehead against yours, the white puff of his forelock tickling your nose and forcing you to close your eyes so his fur won’t get in them. “Thank you for caring so much. I really, really don’t deserve it, after everything I did to you and everybody else, but… it makes me feel a little better, to know that someone still cares enough to cry for me.”

You want to _scream._ How could you possibly explain? You don’t know where to even _try_ to begin to undo this horrible misunderstanding, and if you tried to force Chara to take control of your body to talk to Asriel directly you _know_ they’d just flee, they’re so convinced of Asriel’s contempt. If you told Asriel that Chara is here and didn’t have proof, he’d probably just think you’re trying to make him feel better, the same as he thinks Chara’s tears of anguish are the same as your own tears of frustration and heartache for them both.

Asriel sets his chin on your right shoulder and wraps his arms around you, giving you one good hard squeeze. He’s soft and squishy and habit on Chara’s part wants to make you relax all relieved, except that right now it just digs the thorns deeper. “Frisk, thank you for listening to me.” He squeezes you again and steps back, shifting his hands to rest on your shoulders, beaming at you: Only the wet spots on the fur of his face betray him. “You should really go be with your friends now, okay?” He lets you go, and blinks, and makes a troubled expression, reaching one claw up to scratch his chin. “Oh, and, please… In the future, if you uh, see me… don’t think of it as me, okay? I just want you to remember me like this. Someone that was your friend for a little while.”

He starts to turn away. You gulp down a sob that would’ve been _very_ loud and ugly. You don’t think you’ve ever been this angry in your life.

Asriel stops. He doesn’t face you, but he clasps his hands at his waist, winding his fingers together. “Oh, and, Frisk… be careful in the outside world, okay? Despite what everyone thinks, it’s not as nice as it is here. There are a _lot_ of Floweys out there. And not everything can be resolved by just being nice.” He takes a deep breath and turns his muzzle towards you just a little, smiling. “Frisk… don’t kill, and don’t be killed, alright? That’s the best you can strive for.”

He turns all the way back towards Chara’s flower-covered grave. His shoulders slump. You lower your hand from your mouth to scrub your face so you won’t have to squint through your tears. “Well… see you.”

You take one last look at him—Asriel Dreemurr, the person that Chara loves most in the world even now, dead at not quite eleven with 2 LOVE, lingering in monster form for who knows how much longer, completely given up on, even _refusing,_ a happy ending for himself because he believes he doesn’t deserve one. Then you turn and walk in big steps towards the archway. Tears blur your vision as you climb the steps, and when you can’t stand it anymore you _run._

You run and run and run until you’re out of breath, stagger the last few steps down the long long hallway where Toriel pretended to abandon you to see if you had the drive to act on your own, to take care of yourself if you left her, if you were independent enough to kill her and put her out of the misery of waiting forever, living in her grief. Toriel and Asgore were both so determined to die for what they’ve done wrong and it infuriates you that their son is so much like both of them in this matter, that there doesn’t seem to be a third option where Asriel is concerned.

The leaf pile in the next hall is a good place to collapse, so you do, sprawling into a sit and curling up with your back to the wall to wail at the top of your lungs like a baby. This isn’t fair. _This isn’t fair and you hate it!_

It takes you a while to realize that while Chara’s shock and grief and devastation are still echoing through you like the horrible radiating wrongness of slamming the nerves in your elbow, these things are all echoes: Chara themself has settled into a profoundly despondent sense of despair deeper and more viscous than mud or molasses, another emotion you know very well.

 _Chara,_ you think at them, not knowing where to begin any more than you did with Asriel, but they cut you off.

“Don’t, Frisk, okay?” Just hearing the bone-deep weariness in the voice of their heart makes you ache to lie down and sleep for days. “I know you’re just trying to cheer me up because you care, but you don’t have to. Asriel was right about absolutely everything and you know it. I’m a bad person and a bad friend and every horrible thing you’ve gone through since you fell down here is directly or indirectly my fault. Me coming here ruined this place for everyone. If I hadn’t given the monsters false hope and then fucked everything up, Asriel would still be alive. Toriel and Asgore would still be together. Maybe Gaster would even still be here. Snowy’s mom and all the others would never have fallen down. This would be a whole and happy kingdom. Maybe even all the other humans who came between us would still be alive and have grown up and lived normal lives here.

“It should’ve been you. _You’re_ the one who deserves the underground that I fell into, where everyone loved you without question, unconditionally. _You_ wouldn’t have fucked it up, because you’re a good kid, not like me. I’m just a mistake, a freak, I break everything I touch. I wish I’d just died instead. I wish I’d never been born.”

You don’t know what to say—no, there are _too many_ things you want to say, and you don’t know where to start. Just the idea of never meeting Chara is like a physical blow. Your whole body tenses up in rejection. And they _know_ you’re not a good kid, not perfect—how often have you thought about doing bad things to people and only not gone through with it because of them or the player, how often have you said something mean to them, been uncooperative when they were hurting? They _do_ deserve to live, and they _do_ deserve to be loved; they’re rough around the edges and they’ve made mistakes but they’re so smart and funny and strong and _kind,_ above all else kind.

Chara is not listening. They’ve curled deeper into the black ichor of their despair, as if trying to sink into it.

“Don’t worry, Frisk,” they say, a thin whisper, muffled. “I know how these things go. We’re at the curtain call now. You’ll leave the underground with all your friends to get that happily ever after you’ve always deserved but been cheated of, and I… I’ll stay here inside the mountain, with him. You’ve put everything right that can be put right anymore. Maybe that’s all that I need to go to she’ol properly this time, and rest. Go live your life free, for all three of us.”

You screw up your eyes and scream into your thighs—at least as close as your withered vocal cords can come to a scream. It dissolves into ugly crying anyway.

There’s a gentle touch at your shoulder, and you look up to see that the monsters of the Ruins have gathered around you: a Whimsun is the one trying to comfort you, quivering as they hover; a Froggit—the very first one you met, if you’re not mistaken—is close on your other side; Loox and a few Migosps are hovering at the edges of the crowd, and a Vegetoid is offering you a veggie snack. Muffet’s spider cousins have crawled up towards you too, bearing candies wrapped in bright paper from the room nearby.

You never would’ve had so many people rush to comfort you before. Your gratitude to and love for them only aggravates your frustration: Chara was such a huge part of your journey, Asriel too, and if everyone else deserves to have a happy ending so must they. The thought of leaving the underground without them is just too horrible. How are you going to live with yourself if you just stand by while they give up?

 _Frisk,_ someone says from very, very far away.

The sound that isn’t a sound feels a little like the way Chara speaks from inside you, but this does not come from inside you at all. It has the faint and sort of boxy sound of the paper cup telephones you made in class once for a science project.

The sensation of someone holding your hands comes from far away too, and it’s—really weird; for the voice you had a ready metaphor but this long-distance displaced sensation is too alien for you to be able to describe readily.

 _It ISN’T fair,_ the someone says, and you get just the weirdest sense of recognition ever: You felt this sensation before, very briefly, when you fought Asriel; he shattered your soul into pieces over and over but every time you _refused_ to die, and your DETERMINATION fused white-hot with Chara’s, and with the titanic force of someone else’s entirely, bending all of reality around you with a power even Asriel couldn’t crush.

They’ve never spoken directly to you before.

 _I want to help,_ they say, and then there’s a pause, and then: _I have an idea._

You very hesitantly send the feeling of a question down the line. The response you get is a memory of your fight with Asriel, but—through what you can only think of as a game screen’s interface. You see two options to ACT: “Hope” and “Dream”.

You repeat the feeling of a question, hoping for clarity.

The player answers, and your confusion sloughs away like snowmelt to make way for awe.

 _There’s only so much that I can do from outside your world, but I want to help,_ they say, _because I love you all._

_What little power I can give, it’s yours to use as you see fit._

 

 

That the monsters of the Ruins have gathered to you makes the first leg of your journey easy: You tell everyone you meet, and tell all of them to pass it on to everyone they meet, too. The Froggits and the Whimsuns and the Moldsmals, the Loox and the Migosps and the Vegetoids. The little Froggit hiding in the wall, and the living rock on the slide puzzle.

Chara’s depression still makes all the walking itself a slog, though, and by the time you reach Toriel’s house you know you need to take a break. Your chest hurts, your joints ache, you’re tired—all pains you’re familiar with, all symptoms of an aching heart.

So you take a judicious turn into your—no. It was Asriel’s room, you realize with a shudder. A lot more is starting to make sense in retrospect.

You carefully blot Chara’s tears off your face and sit down on Asriel’s mattress, bend down to untie your boots and slip them off, and lie down. Toriel had you stay here before, and—well, no matter what his feelings on the matter were _before,_ you think Asriel’s not going to mind so much if you borrow his bed for a nap.

The twin-sized mattress feels strangely cramped now when you lie down on it, like you need more room to stretch out; curling up into a ball like before is itchy and strange now. It’s a little bit silly—you’ve only spent a few days here; there’s no way you suddenly grew. Your clothes aren’t too small now or anything.

But even though you already feel packed in, you reach down to pick up one of the stuffed Boss Monster dolls on the floor when you remember them. You thought when you first saw them and the other toys that they were babyish and that Chara’s fixation on them was stupid, but… they reached for these for comfort that first night when you had flashbacks and got sick and left them to deal with it, and you don’t see any point in your personal sour grapes getting in the way of something that could help them now.

You hold the doll up in the dark of the room. Its plush fur is matted and tatty in places; some of the seams have been resewn, in tight stitches here that you can only differentiate from the original stitching because you can feel the difference in the thread, and in messier stitches here that remind you a little of that big pink sweater in Asgore’s dresser drawer. It’s patched with patterned fabric—paisley, plaid, a floral print—in a few different places, and now that you’re examining it more closely you can identify that its battered appearance must be the result of having been frequently played with.

You set it next to you on the bed where you lay, keeping one hand on it, and you close your eyes to rest them.

The next thing you’re aware of is Chara saying, “Did you ever used to imagine what your funeral would be like?”

You blink and make a face. Where you fell asleep facing the near wall, you’ve rolled over and are now looking at the other side of the room; you’ve got the stuffed toy tucked close to your chest, wrapped comfortably in your elbow.

 _How do you mean?_ you ask them.

“Like—when you were mad at the people who hurt you or ignored you, like _‘when I’m dead, then you’ll be sorry’_ —like being a fly on the wall while your body’s being put in the ground, and everyone you knew is there, shocked, regretting every horrible thing they ever did to you, wishing they’d treated you better. It’s melodramatic and it’s unrealistic, but…”

 _If it’s a fantasy, there’s no chance that the people you’re mad at will be indifferent. They WILL be sorry like you want them to be,_ you finish for them. _I can understand the appeal._

“Right,” Chara says. “That wasn’t _just_ it. It was true that I wanted to see the flowers again, and I also… I thought it would be easier for Asriel to destroy the village if we weren’t the ones who started it. He was just so… _sheltered._ He was bratty and lonely and didn’t understand the interrelation there, yeah, but he’d been taken good care of his whole life; he wanted for so little. Hate like mine, a past like mine, they were alien to him, and I thought back then… and I guess I was right, from the way he told you… that it weirded him out.” Their voice in your mind catches a little, and you hurt for them so much. “I tried to be prepared for him getting cold feet, but I wasn’t. I really wasn’t. It hurts—a little less to know that he did it for the monsters, that it was everyone here’s lives that mattered more to him than mine, not that he was siding with the people who hurt me.

“But deep down, even I was hoping. I was hoping they’d see my body and recognize me, and—and that even one person, somewhere, would realize that they’d driven me to this and feel bad.” They laugh. “In my own way, I was just as dumb as Asriel. Nobody cared whose corpse it was, they just wanted an excuse to kill the big scary monster. I was supposed to have _planned_ for that, so it’s stupid to be this hurt by it.”

 _I’m sorry,_ you tell them.

“It’s not your fault, Frisk. You don’t have to be sorry.” Chara sighs. “What my parents and the villagers did to me isn’t my fault, but that I wound up like this _is._ Wanting to help the monsters, wanting to avenge myself… everything got so muddled together, and I feel like I treated everything too much like—like a story, like if I just got rid of the bad guys, then that would solve everything. You’re the hero the underground deserves.”

 _I’m not a hero,_ you say, embarrassed. _Or if I am, then you are too, because you’ve been with me the whole time, guiding me, helping me to not give up._

“It wouldn’t have occurred to me to try to get us through here without hurting anybody, though, Frisk,” Chara says very gently. “That was all you. That’s why this is your story, and that’s why if there’s any one thing I can be proud of at the end of everything… I’m proud that I helped you get to the happy ending you deserve.”

You blush very badly and bury your face in the pillow, though that’s not going to hide the sensation of heat in your cheeks from Chara. You want to argue that they deserve a happy ending just as much as you do, just as much as anyone does, but you can’t think of the right words.

“Frisk, do you… do you really think that you’re going to be able to help Asriel this way?” Chara asks, tentative, hope and fear prickly as static all on their side of the mind.

 _I think that considering everything, it’s worth a try,_ you say. _And I don’t want to give up until I’ve tried everything I can._

“…Yeah,” Chara says. “If we _could_ do something for him… you’re right, it is worth a try.”

 

 

You carry your message through Snowdin: To Snowy and his parents, to Chilldrake and the Ice Caps and even Jerry, to Gyftrot and to Glyde and to the living snowman, and to all the townspeople and the Royal Guard dogs too.

You carry it through Waterfall—to the scattered villagers, to the Moldbyggs and the Woshuas and to Aaron and Onionsan, to Shyren and her sister, to Mettaton and Napstablook and the snails, and Gerson and the residents of Tem Village. It hurts your heart to ask the kid in gray you gave an umbrella to on your way to see Asriel while you still can’t do anything for them or for Gaster or any of the other weird gray monsters (you think a sad question at the player, and get a frustrated sense of helplessness back—in this case they seem to truly not have any ideas), but you feel a little better when the clam lady near Napstablook’s house reminds you that there are only so many things you can do today.

Maybe someday you can work together with Alphys, and maybe Sans too, to try to help those who you can’t save right now.

Then through Hotland: To the Pyropes and Vulkins and Tsunderplanes, to the businessmonsters and the loitering kids, to the weird apologizing person with the very flat tail and the fancy hat at Art Club, to Muffet and the Nice Cream guy and the happy Royal Guard couple, to Bratty and Catty, to Burgerpants and all the other people in the MTT Resort and the Core.

You’re shaking when you get into the long elevator. You feel sort of like—like it’s working, like there’s a sense of wonder and excitement all through the air, like anything could happen. But you can’t be fully sure yet if it’s just you.

Before you head to the throne room, you keep going and tiptoe down the stairs on a whim. You can feel Chara in the back of your mind starting to make a crack about how morbid you are, but they’re struck silent by the same thing you are: All the other coffins, the six past theirs that Asgore had arranged in rainbow order, have been opened. Their lids are shoved one way or the other or dropped onto the floor, and every single one of them is empty.

“Well, that’s very odd,” Chara says at length.

 _Maybe their souls went back to their bodies,_ you say, clasping your hands at your middle and rocking from heel to toe. _Maybe they’re all alive again, and they just left the mountain before we all woke up. Maybe this world has still got a few miracles left, after all._

You can just _feel_ Chara thinking about zombie jokes, but they kindly refrain. Instead they say, “I hope that if that _is_ what happened, they’ll be okay out there on their own. It’s hard to tell but I think… a lot of time has passed since each of us came here, hasn’t it?”

 _Maybe whoever came before me can help the rest,_ you suggest, but Chara kind of has a point. Still… the six human kids whose souls Asgore took were strong enough and aware enough to fight back and help you when Flowey absorbed them. If they’re together, you’re sure they can manage.

You crane your neck to regard the coffins. You guess they’re nice enough as far as coffins go, but they look like you’d get very stiff if your soulless body was left to hibernate in one for years and years.

“Yeah, they’re about as comfortable as they look,” Chara says idly, as if _that_ isn’t vaguely alarming at all.

Back up the stairs, the chirping of birds you can hear in the door to the throne room only make your feelings stronger. The monsters have wanted this so much for so long—and Asriel gave up so much for this. It _has_ to work.

There’s a little white dog sitting on Asgore’s throne. It wags its rear and yaps at you, then jumps down and waddles off towards the hallway you came from.

You could _swear_ it winks at you in a conspiratorial sort of way as it goes, like it somehow knows exactly what you’re up to but magnanimously won’t tell any of your secrets.

Then, through the door in the back of the room.

All your friends are right where you left them: Toriel and Sans elbowing each other and laughing over their cellphones, Papyrus alternately clucking his tongue (…?) at their antics and talking to Undyne, who has her attention split between him, Alphys, and Asgore. Everyone is smiling—Asgore sends occasional wistful looks Toriel’s way but never says anything, and this is probably the happiest you’ve ever seen Alphys. Looking at them all makes your heart swell with how much you care for them, and how much you know they care for you, and the knowledge of how far you’ve come.

“Frisk!” Papyrus calls. “There you are! Is it time to go look at the Surface now?? Will I at last be rescued from watching my brother and the Queen texting each other like ginormous dorkuses even though they’re literally standing right next to each other in real life????????”

You giggle. Now that Papyrus has noticed you, everyone else slows their conversations and turns to face you, too, so that they can be sure they’ll see you when you talk. Your eyes sting a little, but Chara is the only one who notices, and they aren’t telling anyone.

 _Not just yet,_ you tell them. _There’s someone else who still needs my help, before we go. I came back to tell you it’ll be a little longer, and… to ask for your help too._

“Well, gosh,” Asgore says, his round eyes widening even more. Talking to him now after having spoken to Asriel for so long, the family resemblance is striking. “If there’s anything we can do…”

_Do you all remember how there was a big flash of light, and then the next thing everyone knew, you were all waking up and everyone knew my name?_

“There was a flower,” Alphys says very quietly. You think Sans and Papyrus both sneak little glances at her—Papyrus knew Flowey, and Sans had at least heard about him. Toriel starts to frown too.

 _That’s right,_ you say. _This might sound a little weird, but… I want you to try to remember what happened when the light came. There was someone there with all of us, someone nobody can remember, and I want you to try to think of that person, because they helped us all, and now it’s our turn to help them back._

“Oh, dear,” Toriel says. “This sounds like quite the pickle. Would you rather one or more of us come along with you?”

Your jaw drops a little—you have no idea how you’re supposed to respond to that.

“This is more like the Toriel I remember,” Chara whispers to you, fondness so wistful in their voice that you start to tear up again. “She probably feels bad for just kicking you out of the Ruins, too, so I bet she wants to make up for it by being a responsible grown-up now.”

 _I think that that might not work,_ you say slowly. If you brought Toriel or Asgore, Asriel would definitely run, and not accept your help. Bringing Alphys or Sans… would make things weird. You’re not sure how Asriel would react to Undyne. Papyrus might actually be able to help, but… you’re not sure how you could justify asking him along without bringing everyone else too. _And besides, I need everyone’s help just doing this. I’ve been asking everyone in the underground to help spread the message._

“So you’re gonna harness the power of everyone’s hearts beating as one!!” Undyne says. She clenches her fist, probably just for the drama of it. “Heh… even if anime isn’t real, it looks like the most _important_ parts of anime are still true anyway! We’ll be here to back you up, Frisk! So go do your thing!!!!!!”

“To be honest, I’m not quite sure what you’re up to, kid,” Sans says, and slowly closes his left eye. “Buuuuut… I figure that whatever it is you’re doing, you’ve got a good reason for it. We’re all rootin’ for ya.”

“All we have to do is t-try to remember what happened and, uhh, who was there?” Alphys asks, pushing her glasses up on her snout.

You nod. _And… I guess hope for them, cheer for them, want to help them, as strongly as you can. I get the feeling that the strength of everyone’s feelings is really, really important right now._

 “Excellent! You have called upon just the right monsters! I, the great Papyrus, will make sure to show you what an excellent cheerleader I am!!!!” And he strikes a jaunty pose, hips cocked to the side with one finger extended towards the ceiling. Chara thinks at you that he probably learned that one from Mettaton, and you agree, but you keep it to just the two of you. “We will make sure to set our sincerity meters to maximum!”

You giggle. _Thank you. I really appreciate the help._

“And we are happy to give it,” Asgore says, and he smiles down at you. “Do your best, Frisk. We will be here waiting until you are done.”

“Be good,” Toriel cautions you. “Do not get into trouble.”

You don’t know what you ever did in your life to deserve to meet all these wonderful people, but you’re going to be grateful to Chara and the player forever for helping you make friends with them. You give everyone a great big smile and make a heart shape with your hands at them all, and wave before you set off on the long journey back through the castle to cross the Core and Hotland so you can ride the ferry.

 

 

The Riverperson hears you out quietly when you ask for their help, and just nods cheerfully as usual when you ask them to deliver you to Snowdin.

They spend the journey singing nonsense as usual, but when you arrive and hop off the boat into the snow they call for you to stop. You do, turning over your shoulder to watch them.

“Fixing things is both easier than you thought, and much harder than you ever imagined,” they say. “But don’t give up hope.”

You nod and strike a tough pose for them before hurrying on your way.

 

 

Your walk back through the Ruins starts out purposeful, but you can’t keep it that way. Nerves—yours, Chara’s—and the palpable atmosphere of the whole underground holding its breath speed your pace to a trot and then an all-out run. You don’t actually know how long Asriel still has in this form; you’re not sure how well this will work if you try it on Flowey instead, though you have hopes that it’ll mean the same no matter what he looks like on the outside. You’ll have a whole lot to explain to everyone either way but that’s a bridge you can cross after you accomplish what you’re here for.

For all that worrying, Asriel is exactly as you left him: A young Boss Monster staring glumly at the patch of flowers over Chara’s grave. He turns at the sound of your footsteps, and politely waits for you to slow to a stop, bend over puffing for breath, and straighten up before he wrinkles his brow at you and says in a singularly whiny tone, “Don’t you have _anything_ better to do, Frisk?”

The whole way back here you’ve been brainstorming and rehearsing possible openers, with Chara occasionally offering smartassed commentary, but now with Asriel in front of you it’s like your brain has taken all of them, dumped them into the recycle bin, and picked DELETE ALL from its menu. Your face flushes. You scowl at him.

 _No I don’t,_ you say. _I’m specifically back here to tell you to stop being so DUMB. Refusing the chance of being happy ever again because you feel guilty about bad stuff you did isn’t noble or heroic. It doesn’t do you or anybody else any good! Self-pity isn’t always a bad thing, but you’re just being a silly POOP HEAD about it. So stop it!_

Asriel spends maybe half a minute looking at you like you’ve sprouted extra arms. Then he scrunches his face up. “Frisk, uh… not that I don’t appreciate the thought, but I literally don’t have a soul anymore. I’m going to turn back into a flower, and after that I’m eventually going to forget again what it was like to feel love. I might not be a danger to everyone around me right away, but _I will turn into one someday._ ” He hesitates, and turns back toward the grave behind him. “I don’t want to disappoint my parents and hurt everybody with what a bad person I am, okay? I did what I set out to do. And it’s _true_ that somebody needs to stay and take care of these flowers.”

You can’t really _scream,_ but you let the frustrated noise well up in your chest and force it out between clenched teeth, stomping your foot a little in the dust. You grab Asriel’s sleeve and pull him back around to face you so he’ll at least _see_ you talk, even if you can’t force him to listen.

 _Not letting anybody help you isn’t going to make the stuff you’re ashamed of go away,_ you sign so hard it hurts your shoulders. _It just hurts the people who are trying to help you even more when you snub us! I REFUSE to accept an ending like this. It’s just not fair! If I’m allowed to have a second chance at life even though I came here to die, then you should get one too! Yeah, you did a lot of terrible things, you made a LOT of mistakes, but you tried so hard to help the monsters, and—and you’re so LOVED, Asriel, so much more than you realize, it’s not the watered-down version of you from the fairy tale they tell about you and Chara that they love, it’s YOU._

 _I went and talked to EVERYONE, Asriel. They only remember it in bits and pieces, but everyone knows my name because you asked it, and they know that_ something _happened that made the Barrier break, they know that_ someone _has to have broken it. And guess what? EVERYONE wants to help you. At least let them try before you resign yourself to your tragic fate!_

 _Punishing yourself won’t make your mistakes go away, and it also means you won’t be able to go out into the world and grow and change and do good._ You have to stop to wipe tears off your face here. You’re so _angry._ Even Chara, who’s so devastated at the thought of Asriel rejecting them that they want to erase themself from ever having existed, is still willing to hang on to try to help him now.

Asriel looks—looks mulish, his brows all drawn low and his teeth bared and gritted as if in refusal. It would be a lot more convincing if his eyes weren’t dripping, his nose not threatening to run.

You take a step forward and clap his face between your palms, trying for firm but not unkind. It doesn’t work as well as it might’ve on a human; you get his cheeks, but you also wind up pinching his floppy ears a little between your fingers and sorta catching the corners of his lips on the heels of your hands. Asriel growls at you like a puppy and tries to back out of your grip, but you just smoosh his face gently in between your hands.

You fold your lips into your mouth one at a time and huff. “The only one who thinks you’re beyond saving is _you,”_ you say out loud in a flat croak. Then you let him go.

If he keeps turning you down you have no idea what you’re going to do—you don’t think you _can_ actually force him to take your help—but he just wipes his eyes and sniffles and then folds his arms and glares at you.

“Okay, _fine,_ buttface,” he blusters. “If you’re _really_ that bored and you _really_ think you can do something, why don’t you try it then! You can have one shot at it, if that’s what it’ll take for you to give up and go away.”

You take a deep breath and close your eyes. Chara’s will roars up to join yours, their determination burning painfully: This is absolutely what they talk about in stories, loving someone so much you’d die for them. Chara can sense your romantic metaphor and shoots you back an image of flowers growing out of a human chest, roots sunk deep into the bones and the lungs and nestled up in the delicate fibers of the heart, something you could pull out over and over and never be rid of, even though (they think) he hates them and their feelings would surely just be unwelcome at this point. _Well, WOULD you want to get rid of it? It would take work but you could,_ you think to them, and Chara’s raw shock doesn’t come with a word picture of them crossing their arms protectively over those flowers they’ve imagined but carries a sense of that anyway.

The underground is teeming with light like stars, like a satellite photo of the world on a holiday, so many monsters tracing back along their incomplete memories, knowing that somewhere someone needs their help one last time, wanting to offer what little they can. Somewhere Alphys is probably putting the pieces together, and maybe Sans and Papyrus are too, and Toriel and Asgore might not know how close they are to the son they thought they’d lost but they’ll reach for him anyway even not knowing that it’s him; somewhere Undyne is throwing her whole self into the belief that everyone’s hearts beating as one will make all the difference, because she’s a hero and she loves this world and everyone in it.

And a world away there’s someone else praying for you. Chara’s always called them the player, they’ve always sort of treated everything that’s happened since they woke up when they heard Flowey like it’s some sort of video game, but you think that they might be right about this: The determination that’s let you and Chara manipulate causality as easy as cat’s cradle comes from some faraway plane that’s not yours but now that you’re more aware of them you think the player’s ability to directly interfere in this world is limited. Their hope is a stubbornness in the face of futility. They can’t do anything about Asriel, but they’ve given you their idea in the gamble that maybe you can.

You reach out and put your hands on Asriel’s chest.

He startles and almost balks out from under your touch, craning back as far as he can without falling over like he’s embarrassed by it.

As for you—you link hands with Chara who’s hand in hand with the player in your hearts, and you reach out to the underground with your mind, questing, try to make yourself into a conduit as best you can.

 _It can still get better,_ you think at Asriel furiously, grasping. _You’re not going to turn back into the carefree kid you probably used to be overnight, and you may not EVER be that kid again, but the way you are right now isn’t the best you’ll ever feel anymore. It can still get better, if you’re willing to try. I wanted to die so bad just a few days ago and there’s so much still in this world, so many reasons to hang on—the crinkly sound dry leaves make and butterscotch-cinnamon pie, lamps the perfect size to hide behind and kind little towns, music boxes and heroes making big anime speeches, weird labs and people setting cheese out for mice, nice monsters who’ll start loving you as soon as you make friends with them, people you’ll want to save and who’ll want to save you. I promise. I promise. So don’t give up just yet._

Your palms grow hot as you push against the bounds of the world. Asriel gasps.

Between your hands, at the center of your chest, the faint outline of an upside-down heart appears. The monster-soul shape slowly, slowly fills up shred by shred, like it’s being added to pixel by pixel, becoming more and more opaque.

Once it’s whole, it flashes and spins once and then sinks into Asriel’s chest, there to stay.

You take your hands away and you smile, satisfied with yourself. Asriel just shakes his head numbly, like he doesn’t believe it yet.

“How—” he finally manages to get out, then falls silent.

 _It’s a present from everyone,_ you tell him and smile. _Gerson said that Boss Monsters gain power from their parents’ souls, so I got everyone in the underground to give you just a little tiny bit of their souls, small enough that they won’t even miss it, but enough for it to add up to a whole one for you. It’s a gift from all the monsters, and from me, and from Chara, and from the one who’s helped guide us all this time, because we want you to live._

“But that, that doesn’t,” Asriel babbles, blinking tears away. Then his brain must catch on the backwards sign of the knife you’ve never had to make to someone before, and he squints and his eyebrows come down and his mouth forms the shape of Chara’s name.

 _There’s still someone else who needs our help,_ you say over the plunging sensation in your stomach that definitely doesn’t come from you. Your left hand snaps into a fist to keep you from signing, so you continue aloud, trying hard. “There might’ve been a reason you mistook me for Chara.” Your left hand tries to reach up to cover your mouth; you grab it with your right and hold it at your waist, try to confer the sensation of holding Chara’s hand tight, implore them to trust you. “They’ve been with me this whole time, helping me. A little like when they gave you their soul, except that they don’t have a soul now. We’re not sure how it works or even really how and why it happened.” You smile a little, awkward, still trying to wrestle your own hand into submission. “They don’t want you to know that they’re here. They’re trying to fight me telling you.”

 _“Of course I’m trying to fight you!”_ Chara wails in the back of your head. “You complete idiot! He doesn’t need to _know!_ He’d be happier not knowing! Have you somehow forgotten the part where he hates me now that he has _you_ as his new best friend!!”

“Chara’s—” Asriel’s eyes, meanwhile, have gone all round. “Chara’s _here?_ They’re really here? This isn’t just a prank?”

You stick out your tongue at him. _You two are the ones who like pranks, not me. It’d be awfully mean to lie to you about this. I would never._

“Chara’s _here?”_ Asriel repeats. “Really?”

You wait just a second to see if Chara is going to try to block you, but your hands don’t try to knot themselves up or cover your mouth, and your throat doesn’t close. Chara themself pushes the feeling of a furious shrug at you, very _do what you want, Frisk_.

 _Yes,_ you tell Asriel, and pat your chest over your heart. _They’re here. But we can’t stay this way. I don’t… know if I could bring Chara out of the mountain like this, they weren’t planning to come along anyway, and even if I could… I don’t think we could bear sharing a mind for much longer._

_I think that as long as we have everyone’s power still, and if you help me, we can save Chara too, but—_

“Of course I’ll help you,” Asriel interrupts, still wide-eyed. Chara reacts to this in blank shock, but _you_ aren’t surprised; you’ve been watching the way Asriel orbits the flower patch like he’s its moon, the way that it’s always the flowers he looks to when he’s avoiding your gaze. “I don’t know how much I can do, but—but Chara is…” His shoulders sink as if under some sort of great weight. “If somebody like _me_ deserves a second chance, then of course Chara does too.”

 _Chara is buried here, right?_ you ask, pointing at the flowers.

“Y—yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Asriel says. “It’s all stuff I learned about after the fact but Mom took their body when she left, and she must have buried them where they fell.”

 _Definitely buried? Their bones and things are all intact and not burnt or anything, right?_ you press.

“Mom and Dad offered to… to cremate them when, you know… and Chara explained that they shouldn’t then, so I doubt Mom would’ve,” Asriel says.

 _Then we can just fix their old body that way,_ you tell him. _Use the bones as a frame and regenerate from there, because they’ll remember what their flesh looked like._

Now Asriel’s wide eyes are all fascination, not shock. “Are you a _sorcerer?”_ he asks.

 _No,_ you tell him. _Have you seen me use magic at all since I came here? You followed me the whole time._

“Oh, yeah,” he says, but looks a little put out nonetheless.

You could explain, or try to, but you don’t want to waste time, and it could take a _lot_ of time, because it’s so half-formed even in your own mind—the bits of hard science, DNA and the epigenome and forensic scientists and anthropologists analyzing the remains of ancient people, and the parts that are culture, Chara’s and yours, golems and the world to come. Asriel’s knowledge of science is probably a century out of date, and you don’t know how much Chara has told him about Jewish folklore. You sort of append a question to this last thought, knowing that Chara will be seeing it as you think.

“Do you understand what you’re doing, Frisk?” is what they ask, though, and you know that they’re not talking about your and the player’s cobbled-together plan. “I don’t have a place in your happy ending. I ruined this world, I got Asriel killed, and I—I’ve never wanted to go back to the surface world. I wanted to stay _here,_ forever. I don’t want any part of humanity anymore, and living was so painful for me for so long. I wanted to rest. I’d be fine with just—stopping, resting. Are you prepared to take responsibility for this?”

 _Chara,_ you tell them very gently, _you were murdered._

They go very quiet.

 _The underground is safe and warm and full of love but it’s stagnant,_ you tell them, fumble for the proper ideas to communicate your unformed thoughts. _We threw our old lives away to be reborn here but being_ reborn _means leaving the womb and really being alive again. You were supposed to have had another chance at life, but Asriel and the villagers took that away from you and you didn’t get to die on your own terms. I know you think of your part in this story as settling your last unfinished business, but there’s still so much more that you haven’t done in life. You love all the people that we’ve met together but they don’t know you yet, and you deserve the chance to get to be properly friends with each other. There are still things that you want to say to Asriel too, aren’t there?_

 _There’s—there is going to be a lot that’s difficult, but I’ll be there for you through it. You’re loved more than you know, too._ Chara’s only response to this is acrid scornful doubt. _You ARE! And even if you want to make the excuse that a lot of people don’t know everything about you, the player and I know the real you, and WE love you._

“The player didn’t even know you and me are different people a couple hours ago,” Chara grumbles, but they don’t complain any more than that. It would be pointless to, with the player’s love bearing you both up like sunshine made solid.

You and Asriel kneel on either side of the little unmarked grave. Asriel’s hands boil green with magic he says he’s a little unpracticed at and you reach for the hearts of the whole underground again, implore them to keep hoping as the player asks you to _* HOPE,_ and you and Asriel both rest your hands in among the flowers, fingers in the soft soil, which

_dips_

like sand in a sieve, earth and flowers gently pulled into the light filtering through the soft brown clumps and stray petals like starlight or jewels.

You’d been a little afraid that it would be gross, all guts and gristle reforming piece by piece, but it’s not like that. In fact it reminds you more of a video you saw in science class about digging up dinosaur bones, the way that loose rock and dirt is gently blown away once the bulk of the chiseling is done; a human face and limbs and torso come up from the sinking ground clean. The dirt doesn’t cling to Chara anywhere.

The only photo you saw of them was in sepia and they were hiding their face in it; the impression you got of them once in a mirror was blurry. This is the first truly clear look you’re getting of them. They’re not as pale as you were expecting—their skin’s a light olive that’s closer to your own dark olive-gold than anything. The hands are pockmarked in little white craters and scratches that look like the surface of the moon; puffy white lines march up and down their arms like matchsticks in rows. Their hair’s a deep brownish red—a true auburn, you think is the right word for it, soft and thick with a very slight wave. There are faint dark circles under their eyes and they have the same nose as a lot of people you used to see at temple; the hook in the bridge is more of a sharp angle than a smooth arc.

Across Chara’s body from you, Asriel sits. His gaze is steadfast on their face, flicking side to side a little as if to drink in every detail.

“Well done and all,” Chara says, dry, “but there’s still no soul for this thing, numbnuts. What are you going to do about _that.”_

You smile and pull a Last Dream out of your pocket.

Coming out of your fight with Asriel, your inventory was still _full_ of these things—you asked Chara to tell you what they made of the amorphous items, which are faintly warm or cool to the touch, glow blue and gold, and give off pretty cascades of opalescent light like a sparkler. Chara called them _the goal of Determination_.

You hold the Last Dream in both hands, cup it gently the way that you would something alive and fragile, and try to—to mold it with your mind, want it more than anything. A place for Chara’s mind to stay that _isn’t_ attached to yours, a bridge between them and the empty body you and Asriel and everyone’s hope has restored. Their soul was the same red as yours, you saw from the mark on the coffin Asgore had made for them, the red of determination, and if the Last Dream is a crystallization of determination then—

It forms curves on one side and a point on the other, condenses in your palms, becomes solid. The blue and the gold reach towards each other, through shades of purple and orange, meeting in red; the sparks all pull inside it.

So much trouble might have been solved if the monsters had been able to have something like this, but then the Last Dream was only born from the clash of a godlike entity and a perfect unison of three separate beings’ DT. If not for the very specific series of events that led up to this you wouldn’t have such a perfect raw material to work with and you might have had to try to give Chara a monster soul like Asriel’s, or they would have had to remain soulless.

The soul shudders in your hands and settles, identical in every detail to your own. You gently ferry it to Chara’s chest—soft and warm but very still—and you try to urge them to go.

“Well,” Chara says, uncertain, “here goes nothing. ‘Bye, then.”

You have—just the most absurd sensation, like—like you’re a chair that someone with bare legs has sat on for too long in summer and their skin has stuck to your surface, and they’ve stood up and slowly unstuck. It makes your skin crawl, and you squirm where you’re kneeling in the dirt. That agonizing slow peel of a feeling flows all through your body, up your arms and to your fingers, and the soul disappears into the chest of the body. You feel a heartbeat under your fingertips and the ribs rise up under your hands. You lift your palms a little—you don’t want to let go until you’re _sure_ —but then Chara’s face twists a little as if in discomfort and their eyelids lift, baring shocking red irises. Asriel makes a quiet, weepy whimpering noise, muffled behind one paw. You breathe out in relief and pull your hands back.

Chara sits up, slowly, blinking, eyes narrowed against the light. You can’t actually tell, you realize with a start, how much of their expression is sullenness and how much is unease—you’ve never had to read their face before, and it was easy to tell how they were feeling when those feelings kept drifting into you like an oil spill.

Meanwhile Asriel sputters and averts his gaze and pulls his sweater hastily off, tugging it halfway inside out in the process and then hastily righting it. You watch this process mystified and only realize when Chara frowns and regards him from the corner of their eye why he’s doing this: They’re naked, their funeral shroud and whatever clothes they had worn when Toriel buried them long since decomposed.

“H—here, j-just…” Asriel says, holding the sweater out in Chara’s vague direction.

“Thank you,” Chara says, and accepts it from him. Their voice sounds wrong, you think while they pull it over their head and down to their lap: Chara’s memories have told you that they’re just barely taller than Asriel is, an inch or so, but he’s built larger and heavier than them and so the shirt still sits low enough to protect their privacy. It’s only as they settle their hands in their lap and avoid his eyes and yours that you realize what strikes you as wrong: Their voice sounded subtly different in your head the same way that your own does, and to hear them speak out loud is like hearing your voice on a recording.

You’re never going to hear their voice in your head again, you realize with a pang, and you try to choke back that emotion on reflex because you don’t want Chara to realize that you regret letting them go in any way after everything you told them, afraid they’ll start doubting the decision to go along with you and live—only to realize that you don’t have to do that anymore, either. You and Chara are well and truly _separate,_ now.

And they’re never going to bathe you in their trauma again or tear you apart for your inner thoughts and first impulses, but—they’re never going to know exactly how you feel without you saying it, anymore, you’re not going to be able to have that instant private back-and-forth. They could _leave you_ now, if they wanted to.

Chara’s properly alive now—they’re like six inches away from you—it’s senseless to _miss_ them. But the sense of loss just keeps welling up and welling up, and you aren’t sure what to do with it, so you just wind your hands into the hem of your shirt.

“Chara…” Asriel says, reaching out to them. They pull away, leaning towards you.

“Please don’t,” they say, exhausted. “You don’t have to waste your compassion on someone who’s hurt you as much as I have.”

“What are you talking about?”

Chara breathes in. They shift their legs awkwardly, maybe still trying to get used to corporeality, and they clench their fists. Then unclench them, and touch the fabric of Asriel’s sweater like they’ll never be allowed to again.

“Didn’t you listen when Frisk told you I’ve been here all along?” They don’t turn around to see Asriel make a face at them in between wiping his cheeks, but they don’t miss a beat when they say, as soon as he’s settled, “So, I was there when you talked to them about me. About how I’m not the greatest person, and they’re the kind of friend you always wanted, and how you’ve decided you did the right thing back at the village. Et cetera.”

Asriel winces a little. Then he takes a deep breath. “I, uh, I would’ve phrased some of that differently if I’d known you were there.”

“We can’t change that now,” Chara says dryly, “and anyway, you’re well within your rights to resent me. I’m not a good person, I wasn’t a good friend, and you and your family went through so much grief because of me. I understand very well why Frisk is preferable to me. _I_ would want them over me.” They pause, and they close their eyes, but too late to keep you from noticing that those eyes are wet. “I was selfish, and in my selfishness I hurt you, and I regret it. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“I’m still sorry that I hurt your feelings,” Asriel replies with a gravity that you wouldn’t have expected out of him. “I didn’t want or mean that.”

He takes a breath and looks down as if to gather his words to say something, but this time Chara interrupts without turning around.

“If you’re going to be sorry for _anything—”_ Chara begins, winding their fingers into the sweater; then they cut themself off, take a deep breath. “I don’t recall ever agreeing to a double suicide, Asriel. I gave you everything I had, I entrusted you with everything I _was,_ but that was so that we would be together forever. I didn’t want to _die_ with you, and I certainly didn’t want to die with you like _that._

“I don’t intend to argue with your judgments of my character, because you’re right. And I understand now what you were thinking then, or at least I understand more of your mindset and your values and why you did what you did, especially after how you explained it to Frisk. I’m glad it wasn’t the worst-case scenario I’d imagined. But it was, it _is,_ so hard for me to trust, and I gave you all of myself, gave you my heart both figuratively and _literally_ and you betrayed me. To be called _acceptable collateral_ in the name of accomplishing your goal. I’ll take responsibility for my own bad behavior and accept you hating me, but fuck you for that specifically.”

Chara’s voice cracked in the vicinity of _I gave you everything I had_ and they’ve been glaring at the flowers since, mouth contorted in a snarl that wrinkles their chin and pinches the skin of their nose, fat tears trickling down their neck and dripping onto Asriel’s sweater.

Asriel is breathing shallow, puffing his chest in and out. His mouth is small and pinched and the motion of his breath ruffles his fur, makes the heavy locket on his chest glitter in the distant light from above, flashing into your eyes until they sting, even squinting.

You feel like a rubbernecker, but you don’t think you could get up and leave without drawing attention to yourself and you don’t—you always want attention, but this is entirely the wrong kind. Your only course of action is to stay very still and not make a sound.

After several minutes have passed, Asriel says quietly, wobbling only a little, so casual that he could just have been waiting to make sure that Chara was really done: “I’m not the greatest person either.”

Chara lifts a hand from Asriel’s sweater to wipe their face. They’re very careful to avoid getting tears and snot on the sleeve, and they wipe the hand off on their bare knee.

“I _do_ wish that I’d had a friend like Frisk all along,” he goes on, “but I also think that you would’ve been better off with somebody like Frisk than with me as your friend. All the time I was so happy that you understood me and liked me and wanted to be around me, I never thought once about whether or not I really understood _you._ Even though I _knew_ why you climbed the mountain, that didn’t mean I _understood_ it. I didn’t understand what it was like to want to die until I was a flower, and even then I was too chicken to go through with it, so I probably _still_ can’t understand. They could.

“I’ve been thinking a lot since I fought with Frisk about how I built this image up in my head that had nothing to do with the real you, and how I was so in love with the idea of finally having a best friend that I’m not sure I was a very _good_ best friend, and… about how maybe if you’d had a friend like Frisk who could really get you, a friend who was a really good person, maybe things wouldn’t have wound up like they did.

“I don’t hate you, and of course I regret that you died. I’m just trying to figure out how I feel about all this stuff that’s happened. I thought I was gonna stop being able to love forever and I was trying to face up to the fact that I really _did_ get you killed! I wanted to be all brave and cool about everything! I didn’t want to lose face in front of Frisk or in front of _you.”_

This was really uncomfortable already—you wanted a soft pretty heartwarming ending like a movie, with Chara and Asriel apologizing to each other and assuring each other of their friendship and everything being okay; you didn’t think at _all_ about how just like you want to help Asriel but don’t really forgive him, the two of them might not really forgive each other either—but this is finally at the point where it’s _too_ uncomfortable. Before you can lose your nerve, you clap your hands once loudly. Both of them jump and stare at you with identical owl-eyed expressions.

 _Please stop talking about me like that,_ you say. _I’m not a perfect good person and I’m not always nice. Asriel, you JUST said how you regret putting Chara on a pedestal and not acknowledging their faults, and now you’re doing it to me too. Chara, you’ve been in my head for days now! You’ve seen so much bad that I’m capable of. You should know better than to treat me like I’m that great. So many people have treated me like a thing for so long—it’s scary thinking that friends I care about might start treating me like an idea and stop treating me like a person, too._

Chara swallows. They look you in the face and then drop their gaze. “You’re right about that. I’m sorry, Frisk.”

“I’m sorry too,” Asriel says. “I—now that I have the time, I want to try to be better, and think about other people more instead of just myself. Can I still… try to be better to you both?”

Chara starts to cry again, but quietly this time. They turn a little to look at him and they say, “I want to be better to you too.”

Asriel laughs. It turns into crying halfway through.

Your own eyes are stinging, and a smile is hurting your cheeks. You reach behind your head to undo the clasp of Chara’s locket, and fumble with it for a good while before you manage to properly get it undone. You gather it up in one hand and tap Chara’s shoulder, and when they face you, you hold it out to them.

Instead of just taking it from you, they lean towards you and bow their head. You stick your tongue out a little and you fumble with the clasp a lot more, but the end result is still the locket resting on Chara’s chest where it ought to be. It’s a large pendant, heavy with the little music box inside, and you feel a lot lighter without it on but you also sort of miss the weight.

Chara reaches up with one hand to grip the locket, and reaches out with their other hand to wrap two fingers lightly around one of Asriel’s. He looks down at the fingers and gently pushes his own in between all of Chara’s, holding hands with them palm to palm. Chara lists sideways into your shoulder. You suddenly feel very tired—more exhausted than you’ve ever been since coming to the underground.

One of those gigantic beds from Mettaton’s hotel would be perfect right now. You would all fit on it and you could all wake up to see each other, and there would still be space if someone decided they needed it. But the hotel is closed now, because everyone is excited about leaving. Snowed Inn is closed for the day, too.

“We’re going to need to talk about this,” Chara says. “We’re all going to need to talk about this _so much_ but my throat hurts.”

“Oh,” Asriel says. “Oh, shoot, your body’s still sort of _new?_ Or just unused? We should let you rest, we should go take a nap or something.”

 _It has to be a short rest because I think we need to find everybody else before they find us, so it can at least be on our terms when we show up like ‘Surprise!’, but what are we going to do about your clothes? We can’t just wander around everywhere with both of you half-naked,_ you say.

“Asgore kept our old clothes,” Chara points out, “so I can give Asriel his sweater back and get an outfit of my own once we get to New Home, and until we’re there I can just borrow a pair of shoes from the other kids’ extras that Toriel kept. There’ll probably be at least _one_ set that fits well enough to make it through Snowdin and a boat ride.”

“Maybe the Riverperson will let us nap on the boat if we ask them really nice,” Asriel says hopefully. Maybe he also knows about the inns and hotels being closed.

 _It would be nice,_ you agree.

“Now that we have a plan,” says Chara, “will you two mind helping me out of my literal actual grave before I get dirt permanently encrusted on this nice sweater?”

You laugh. It starts out as awkward giggles and then crests easily into that release-of-tension hyena cackle; when you’ve calmed enough, you stagger upright and then Asriel does and you help Chara out of their grave. They wobble and clutch at your arms and it’s only funny because you’re all afraid of so much, but you’re all still laughing when you step out of the ring of golden flowers anyway.

 

 

It takes Chara a while to find a pair of shoes that fit, though. In the end they go with a pair of black sneakers that are slightly too big, and which inevitably get slush in them when you leave the Ruins for Snowdin. Chara grumbles about the brightness of the snow for a while and keeps picking their feet up like a cat standing in water running from a hose. They’re shivering. Asriel isn’t, but his breath still steams here, and every now and then he lifts up a bare foot to try to shake the snow off, too.

You hold hands. Chara holds Asriel’s hand and your sleeve, or Asriel holds Chara’s hand and your hand, or if you don’t think you’ll need to talk you stand in the middle and hold Asriel’s hand and Chara’s. You pet Asriel’s fingers and squish his pink pads until he gets ticklish and drops you, and Chara keeps kneading the back of your hand with their fingertips while you try to memorize the strange topography of their scars. Chara says that they saved their file back at Toriel’s house, but you keep feeling like this has to be a dream you’re having. Like if you’re not in physical contact with Chara and Asriel they’re going to vanish like mirages.

Monsters recognize them.

Some seem a little surprised or curious to see you leading two other kids, and you don’t think anyone has realized who Asriel is or who Chara is, at least not yet—but they don’t treat your friends like strangers. There’s just _something_ about the way that they’re received—whenever you first met monsters, unless they knew what a human looked like they tended to assume that you were just some monster who had wandered in from another town, someone they’d never met… but Chara and Asriel get the same reception you now do, warm and familiar.

Maybe no one knows yet that this young human and this little Boss Monster were your guide and the sarcastic little flower that got everywhere, let alone their real identities and roles in recent events; but the people of the underground clearly recognize both Chara and Asriel as belonging here.

You take the Riverperson’s ferry and the elevators to avoid having to go through _literally_ everyone, and when you stop at Asgore’s house it’s as much to delay the inevitable Big Meeting as it is to get Chara clothes. They kick off the clunky too-big sneakers and open the big closet doors, sorting through green shirts with yellow stripes; you sort of look at Asriel and he sort of looks at you and you both back up to the door of his and Chara’s room and dither there, wanting to give Chara the space they need but also not wanting to let them out of your sight, because Chara is too ephemeral right now.

“Oh, you two are _ridiculous,”_ Chara says, but they’re smiling a little and you think you can match the tone and the expression to a particular flavor of fondness that you’d grown to like feeling where you were joined together, a softness that scratched at the edges like embroidered velvet. “You can stay if you _must,_ but at least don’t look until I have underpants on, all right?”

“Of course,” Asriel says, and you give Chara a thumbs up, and you both dutifully turn your backs. There’s a great lot of clattering and a bit of Chara muttering swears under their breath, and then fabric rustling. Asriel is smiling; this must be old and familiar, then. You catch his eye a little and he jerks his head back as if to confirm what you’re thinking, and you smile back at him. Abruptly the unrolling ball of his sweater hits him in the back of the head, making him sputter and laugh.

Chara, you see when you turn, is almost all dressed: Their shirt has a raised black polo collar and a single yellow stripe across the chest, and they’re wearing black socks and short, fitted boxers. They appear to be searching for pants—you guess they wouldn’t have been able to share _those_ with Asriel, given that he has... there’s probably a word for _dog legs with paw feet_ that Chara knows, but you don’t know the technical term, so _dog legs with paw feet_ is how you’ll have to describe him.

Asriel, meanwhile, is pulling on the sweater, and slowly: You think you see him stopping to smell it a couple of times, which is a _little_ eyebrow-raising but also you get it. He lost his entire world and here it is, back, and maybe he can see that it was never the golden perfect thing he thought it was but he’s still going to revel in it.

You try very, very hard not to think of him tearing you apart, blasting your soul into pieces, the excitement in his voice when he said _then we can do everything ALL over again_ , just as carefree as a kid wanting to replay the same game of pretend. Chara forgave him, immediately, without question. You didn’t. You won’t ever. But you’ll wait, as is proper, for him to show whether or not he’s willing to change before you make your final decision on his character. Being nice to ghosts wasn’t the only thing they taught you at temple.

 _“Hah.”_ Chara holds up a pair of brown pants close to the color of their hair. The style and the twill-like material are similar to jeans but these pants seem nicer, more formal. They perch on the edge of the bed that was theirs once and pull the pants on, zip them up, adjust their shirt. Then they retrieve a set of red hightop sneakers they must have set out while finding the rest of their clothes, put their feet into the shoes, and lace them up with careful deliberation.

Asriel has finished dawdling and pulled his sweater back down. This time he’s wearing the locket on top of it. You wonder a little what the point was of hiding it when you found him; if it wasn’t conscious and he just wanted it closer to his skin, or if he was trying to hide it to convince you that he was over Chara and thus win you over. It was a very bad job of convincing, if that was what he was after. Chara was the only one who fell for it, blinded to the meaning behind his behavior by the enormity of their own love.

Fully dressed, Chara stands up and runs their hands down their pant legs. “Shall we… go, then?” they say, careful.

Asriel looks as unsure as they do. “Maybe we should—should think about it a little more. Come up with a way to explain.”

“Alphys knows too much already,” Chara says. “And I’m a little tired of lying and hiding everything.”

“Yeah, but—Sans might be trouble. And what if Mom and Dad…”

Asriel trails off here, looking at Chara and then at you. What if they’re mad, what if they don’t want him and Chara anymore. He left a whole threatening message in an Echo Flower once, which in retrospect was him showing his own hand when it came to feeling replaced more than it was an effective way to threaten you or Chara.

 _It will be fine,_ you say forcefully. You’re not sure what sort of place _you’re_ going to have with Toriel and Asgore once you bring their real son back, but you want to have some tentative sort of faith in the goodness of monsters, and you think that any of the others might take you in and gladly if it came down to that. It’s such a new and strange thought, and you’re glad of it and a little afraid of it equally. _They still love you. They’ll still love you no matter what. Both Toriel and Asgore kept your room the same even after all these years. I think they would’ve been happy to have you back even as a flower._

Asriel startles a little, and then halfway frowns and halfway smiles. “…You know, that’s true. The first time, after I woke up… they _were_ both glad to see me back even the way that I was. I’d just about forgotten that, gosh.”

 _So let’s go,_ you say. Chara meets your eyes just once, briefly enough that you think they’re not quite as sure of their welcome as they are of Asriel’s, but they don’t complain.

You can’t hold hands and walk down stairs, but Chara grips yours tightly once you’re to the ramparts, trailing slightly behind you and Asriel. Your steps and theirs echo down the golden hallway where Sans once judged you, and Asriel’s nails click on the tiles; when you enter Asgore’s throne room, all your steps shush through the flowers just the same.

Toriel is the first to notice you, when you step through the archway and into the little earthen chamber and tunnel that lead to the path outside. She turns with a cheerful smile on her face, calls out “Oh, Frisk!” and then her gaze falls to Asriel and she freezes and the whole room goes quiet, so quiet.

You have time to look at Asgore, whose shocked face echoes Toriel’s exactly, and then at Alphys next to him, squinting and sucking her teeth, you’re sure with light flashing from point to bright point in her mind, and then at Undyne next to her, whose eye is narrowed in recognition.

 _“Asriel?”_ Toriel asks, voice quiet as a breath.

“Mom?” says Asriel, watery, frightened as a deer. He’s trembling where he stands next to you, tense, like he wants to run and hasn’t made up his mind yet whether to charge forward or to flee. “Mom? Dad?”

“How…,” Asgore says, his eyes very wide, shaking his head: There’s too much wonder in his face for it to be refusal. “Is it really…?”

Asriel starts to cry upon the spot. First a dripping faucet and a whimper, then sobs, then a small child’s unselfconscious bawl. “Dad, Mom, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, _Mommy—”_

Toriel sinks down to her knees very fluidly and holds out her arms, and Asriel hurtles into them, letting her wrap him up. He can’t see her face crying into her shoulder, but _you_ can, and so can everyone else in the room. The shock caused by Asriel’s appearance eases, some, at the relief and the vulnerability writ there.

Asgore approaches a little and kneels, still at a respectful distance from Toriel. Asriel doesn’t make any move to escape his mother’s embrace, but he reaches out a little towards his father. Asgore reaches back.

“Hey, Frisk… Since when did Asgore make a mini-clone of himself that’s also shaved?” Papyrus stage whispers, and you laugh. So does everyone else.

“PAPYRUS!!!!” Undyne says, head thrown back, cackling. “That’s the prince!!!!!!!!!!! Don’t you remember your history lessons at ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Oh, the prince????” Papyrus repeats. “No wonder he’s so small!!!!!!!!! I thought it might be a little much to have a clone of the king and then shrink them. Howdy, small prince!!!!!!!!!!!! I am the great Papyrus!!!!!!!!! Formerly aspiring to be the rising star of the Royal Guard!!!!!!!!! But I guess I have to find a new dream now because everyone has insisted upon _pooping my party.”_

Asriel laughs a little, wetly. “I’m sure you can find a new dream soon. You’re so good at so many things, and you have so many friends, and you’re a really nice person.”

“Wowie!!!!!!!! The prince is……… really nice?!” Papyrus exclaims with sparkling eyes, clapping his hands to his face. “And also… for some reason, I’m getting the strangest feeling of déjà vu? Why do I feel like I know you.”

“We _do_ know each other,” Asriel says, and then gulps. “But it’s… kind of a long story.”

“I-I, uh…” Alphys ventures, one hand raised, her forehead creased. “I think I know some of it, a-and he’s… Asriel is right, it w-would be a long story. But I can’t explain how Frisk managed to bring him back here like this, unless…”

“This’s why you needed everyone’s hearts beating as one, right?” Undyne says for you all, grinning broadly. She narrows her eye a little, and her face softens. “Also… are you gonna introduce us to your friend?”

Sans sticks his hands in his pockets and clears his throat that he does not technically have. “I’ve, uh, been wonderin’ that myself.”

Chara flinches, and their grip on your hand becomes brutally tight. But they don’t try to flee, and don’t retreat any further behind you.

“Chara,” Asgore says very softly. You turn your head a little to face them: They’re turned away from everyone but are still looking from the corner of their eye, the hand that doesn’t have a death grip on yours in a white claw around their locket. You’ve noticed that their face is always a little flushed but it’s deep pink now and their chin is wobbling, their eyes overbright.

“Wait— _the_ Chara?” Undyne asks. “As in the first human, the one that used to live with you and Toriel? The only cool human aside from Frisk in existence?”

“The very same,” Toriel says, with a note in her voice like she’s very close to tears. “Though I am not sure how Frisk has brought them back to us, after all this time—it _is_ you, Chara, is it not?”

They take a sharp little breath, pained, and they nod very small.

As you watch Chara, they release your hand and instead grip the side of your shirt, as if to assure you that they don’t intend to flee if you need your hands to speak.

 _Undyne is right, that it was Asriel and Chara that I needed everyone’s help for,_ you say slowly, turning the words and the signs over before you let your hands have them. _It IS complicated and I think we’ll have to take our time to talk about it, but the Barrier couldn’t have been broken without either of them. They tried to—to break it once before, and it didn’t work, and they were going to just finish the job and then rest, but I thought it wouldn’t be fair if they didn’t get to go free too, and so. They’ve been here the whole time, Asriel was here before me and Chara’s been with me since I—_ you have to take a deep breath before you let yourself finish with _jumped._

Something changes in everyone’s faces, like you feared it would, but at least it’s only a very small something.

“Chara,” Asgore says softly. “Would you be all right with coming here for a little while? Only if you want to. But I have missed you very much, and I am very happy to see you again.”

Chara turns more fully towards him and opens their mouth and closes it again, and then says, croaky and with more than a little overt fear: “Is that—really all right? Even though it’s—my fault that—”

“I-it’s all right,” Alphys says fiercely, her hands clenched at her waist. She looks at Undyne a little and Undyne looks back at her, then squats down to be on a closer level to her and to you kids. Chara turns to you and you both think of the tapes, of how Alphys knows _exactly_ what Asriel and Chara got up to behind Asriel’s parents’ backs. “Really. It’s really, really all right.”

“Yeah,” says Undyne, who doesn’t know but is grinning huge and sunny anyway. “We can sweat the small stuff later! Frisk said that you were with them, so that means we’re already sorta friends???? And now we get to meet each other properly!”

“Indeed!!!!!!!!!!” adds Papyrus. “It is always wonderful to have more friends!!!!!! I should know, I didn’t used to have any and now I have a lot of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe even if I can’t be a Royal Guard, I do not yet have to surrender my dream of being popular,” he adds, framing his chin with thumb and forefinger.

Chara laughs a little, which you suspect was his aim, but they just clench their fist tighter in your shirt.

“Frisk may come too, if they would like,” says Asgore, who is now smiling very broadly.

You put a gentle hand between Chara’s shoulder blades, without applying any pressure. Their first step forward is stiff and staggering, and they pull you along with them, but they walk very smoothly into Asgore’s arms for all that. You follow along for your free hug happily.

Over Toriel’s shoulder, you catch sight of Sans, who’s the only one who hasn’t devoted himself to welcoming Asriel and Chara enthusiastically. He shrugs at you a little in a very _welp_ sort of way, as if to say that he’s a little unsure about this ride but he’s still gonna stick with his decision to trust you anyway.

You give him a little smile from around Asgore’s big burly bicep. Really, this is the most you can ask from _anyone,_ you think.

“Thank you, Frisk,” says Toriel, her face warm, “for bringing our son and our foster child back to us.” Asriel squirms a little in her arms to aim a tearful smile at you and Chara; she reaches one hand up to cradle the back of his head as though he were much younger. “Now… would everyone like to step outside, and get a look at the sky?”

 

 

It feels like it’s been years since you’ve seen the sunset, and this is a particularly lovely one to give back to the monsters: It gilds the distant mountains and the city in gold and pink, with little stars starting to wink into view directly overhead, the moon pale somewhere to your right.

“Oh, my,” Toriel sighs, one hand to her chin.

Asgore turns to the rest of you, beaming: “Isn’t it beautiful, everyone?”

Alphys exclaims over how much prettier the outside is than even TV had led her to hope; Undyne is enjoying the taste and smell of the outside air. Papyrus asks dubiously about the sun, and Sans explains, grinning.

“We didn’t get to take our time to watch, before,” Chara says to Asriel, their smile awkward. “But now we can. Hopefully… as many times as we want.”

Asriel, his face pointed up at the stars, nods without saying anything.

“It is very lovely, is it not?” Toriel says, smiling. Then she turns to face everyone, her expression showing more concern. “But I believe we should take some time to think of what comes next.”

“Oh, right,” Asgore says. He clears his throat. “Everyone… this is the beginning of a bright new future, an era of peace between humans and monsters.” He looks at you and Chara and Asriel, standing in a line, and pauses as if to think for a moment before saying, “Frisk, Papyrus, I have something to ask of you. Would you act as our ambassadors to the humans?”

Papyrus gasps and strikes a cool pose. “I would love to be an ambassador! Spreading the message of peace and friendship… after all, I am what some might call a human friend-making expert!! How about you, Frisk?”

“You can say no, if you don’t want to,” Chara says to you very softly, but you just smile at them.

 _I’ll do it,_ you say. These are your friends, and you want to help them so much—a human and a monster together would be a better team, and also… this will be a good way to stay together with everyone, even after the monsters all move to the surface.

“Thank you,” says Asgore, beaming. “You and Papyrus will be wonderful ambassadors.”

“We will be!!!” Papyrus says. “I’m going to go make a good first impression right now!”

He tries to take off down the mountain already; Undyne, Alphys, Sans, and Asgore chase after him and restrain him, laughing.

“Everyone seems so eager to get started,” Toriel says, watching after them. But she stays here, with you and Asriel and Chara, watching the sky for a little longer.

Finally, after several minutes of relative silence, she turns to you. “Frisk… You came from this world, did you not? So you must… have a place to return to, do you not?”

Vividly, the picture of your parents’ house flashes into your mind: Messy, doors closed to you or else, your parents occupied behind those doors or out on the town to party. Chara’s hand in yours brings you back to right now, and you turn to look at the distant horizon.

It’s a very long drop, from here.

“What would you like to do now?” Toriel asks very gently.

The nudge is very, very gentle, and very distant, seeming to come more through Chara’s hand than directly into your mind down a long cable. But you know that one person, at least, is hoping for you to speak your mind.

You take a deep breath. _Can I stay with you?_

Toriel’s eyes widen a little. She kneels down, reaching out to pat your cheek, standing between Asriel and Chara. “Frisk… you really are a funny child,” she says, smiling. “If you had said that earlier, none of this would have happened. It is a good thing you took so long to change your mind.”

She giggles a little, and then stands, smiling down at you. “If you do not have any other place you would like to go, then I will take care of you for as long as you need. Now, let me go rein in our friends so that we may settle down to talk, and have a nice homemade dinner.”

“I was a little scared for a minute that you’d say you didn’t want to stay,” Asriel says, once she’s wandered out of earshot.

 _I was a little scared that she wouldn’t want to let me, now that…_ you trail off.

“I’m glad that you asked by yourself,” Chara says. “Because if you’d tried to bluff about having a place to go home to at this point, I would have had to step in. You didn’t let me and Ree get away with _our_ self-effacing bullshit, and you of all people shouldn’t have to go back to suffering after everything.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” says Asriel. He makes an awkward face. “Though, I hope… things don’t get too uncomfortable, since we’ll probably all be living together, I guess???”

 _It will be okay,_ you tell him. _We’ll talk it out._

Asriel smiles and nods and goes after his mother. You make to follow him, but Chara suddenly grabs your hand, looking up and over their shoulder.

Before you can wonder too much what’s going on, you hear them: _This is where I leave you,_ the player says. _It was my job to get you to the happily ever after, and I can’t follow you there. But I know that you’ll be all right, even without me._

_Thank you for letting me help you—for letting me be a part of your story for a short while. I don’t know if you can ever know how much you’ve helped me, but—please believe me that you have. We may never see each other again, but please don’t forget that I’ll always be rooting for you from the other side._

_Do your best,_ they say. _I hope that you’ll live good lives, and be happy._

_I love you._

_And—be good to each other, won’t you?_

It’s faint, but you have the distant sense of a gentle hand stroking your hair, or maybe a kiss on your forehead. Then:

“Oh,” says Chara. They’re blinking up at the sky. A few stray tears fall. “Our connection—I think it’s closing off.” A few more stray tears. You don’t comment on them, because you have to wipe away a few of your own: You don’t even know who they are, but they were so _kind_ to you. You know they were pushing the rules to help you get what you wanted. And beyond that, you and Chara have been such a mess, you _know_ you wouldn’t have made it here without them. “I think… I think we’re in end credits territory, now.”

You look into Chara’s face and they look into yours. You have to squint—the setting sun behind them is very bright.

“Then,” you say, not willing to take your hand out of theirs, “if this is the only goodbye that we can make… let’s make sure that it’s a really nice one.”

Chara nods and smiles and squeezes your hand.

“I like that idea.”

As one, you turn and step towards the monsters—your friends, your _family,_ the bright future you never thought was going to be yours. It probably _won’t_ be easy, at least not all the time, but… Sans actually said it best, at Mettaton’s resort.

You’ll have to take good care of yourself, and everyone else.

After all, someone out there really, _really_ cares about you.


End file.
